That Awkward Moment When You Realize You're Going to Die One Day

There comes a point in everyone's life when they realize it has to end at some point.

The lucky of us just ride the tidal wave until it crashes on the shore, concepts of existence wasted on people too busy playing the cards they've been dealt and just go all in. They find joy (or at the very least, distraction) in the busyness and day-to-day rush of life. The sudden stop is of no concern to people with no seat belts, because they're just enjoying the ride.

And then, there's people that the idea of death just sticks to them like a Pigpen-esque cloud, stepping in cadence with their fearful shuffle. The slightest threat to their fragile existence is met with expert cowering and flailing of hands combined with picking the flight side of our adrenaline effects. Life is precious, and they're eternally and terrifyingly aware of how easy it is to go the way of the dodo.

I never even thought about death, honestly. It was a nebulous concept that didn't matter when I had the metabolism to consume four liters of Mountain Dew along with an office-sized box of Sour Patch Kids and call it breakfast. I had more important things to worry about, such as figuring out how edible two-day-old Papa John's is (verdict: surprisingly good!) and getting home in time to raid with my guild in World of Warcraft.

And then two unforeseen events kicked over my delusions of immortality.

The first one happened when I heard a sickening screech of brakes and metal twisting outside of my home, usurping the quiet summer evening that we had been enjoying. I ran outside to find a capsized SUV laying next to its prey, a truck, a sedan, a car of some sort, I honestly can't really remember. All I remember is helping the larger car's passengers out of their beached whale of a vehicle and then walking around it to see the husk of the other vehicle-that-had-been, its driver not moving other than sporadic, painful breaths that shook their entire body. I sat with the hysterical driver of the SUV as she kept asking me about the other driver, questions I couldn't answer in good conscience. So I just told her about imaging laptops at work, about how crappy I was at organizing them, how ridiculous some of my co-workers were with technology, just stupid, banal stuff. I didn't know what else to say. "Oh, you've probably just killed another human being, no biggie" isn't something you just tell someone that instinctively knows what they've done. That might seem terrible and tasteless now, but the honest truth is that at that point, everyone in that area was separated into the living and the dead and the reality was just as harsh.

I watched as the emergency crews cut the other driver out of their vehicle, saws singing their terrible music as the firefighters and EMTs went through their routine of attempting to punch the reaper in the face. Tonight, though, the judges would vote for the reaper in 12 rounds, and as I watched them work in the siren-cut night, I came to the realization that whether it was in a pretty way or not, we all end up like that poor sod. To this day, I don't understand how emergency workers live through each night without drinking themselves into a stupor to avoid that daily reminder of their own end that could come just as easily.

A few months later, I was sitting on my kitchen floor in a daze as my wife told me the news that would cement my relentless sense of the passing of time: she was pregnant. I was gonna be a dad. My stare alternated between the floor and those two pink lines that bore undeniable proof of my lineage continuing. But that moment was nothing compared to when I looked down at my son screaming back up at me, telling me that he was unappreciative of the world he just took his first breath in. Suddenly, I was painfully aware of everything that could happen to him, not just to him, but to him if something were to happen to me. Every room he was in was scanned meticulously for possible pitfalls and accidental electrocutions. Every food he could eat was viewed with a critical eye, its ingredients pored over like Scripture, and in some cases, memorized as such. Suddenly, I was slowing down in my morning commute, watching what I ate, and staying home more often to avoid any possibility of dying to outside causes.

This all came to a head last Christmas Eve when I suffered what felt exactly like cardiac arrest. My chest felt tight, my arm was going numb, and as we prepared to leave for the emergency room, I looked at my little boy packed tightly away in his car seat. I thought about all of stuff I wanted to do with him that my dad had done with me, how badly I wanted to be there for him as he started his walk through life, and it broke me down. I started bawling. For the next 12 hours, I sat in that hospital room with plenty of time to think about the expiration date of the little fist-sized muscle in my chest while IVs pumped drugs into my veins and Christmas movies distracted me from the fact that I had never felt closer to death in my entire life.

As it turns out, I apparently had a panic attack, or at least something similar. My discharge papers didn't exactly spell things out in a way that a guy with a bunch of meds in his veins could comprehend. My issues were part physical, part mental, and all terrifying. Everything seemed short-sighted and meaningless. Everything seemed so fleeting now, and I missed that laissez faire attitude toward life, where each day was an adventure and full of potential and not of metaphorical and literal deathtraps.

This is where my latent ADD and an all-new bout of depression shook hands and said "let's make magic!"

My job was now meaningless, I was wasting my life fixing computers, attending meetings, and chiding middle schoolers on their internet usage. I wanted to pursue my dreams and make the most of my limited time on this earth, but every time I tried, I would get halfway through the planning process and flip the table when I felt unprepared to fail. In the past year, I came up with ideas to run an esports organization, write for gaming websites, stream for charity, create content for YouTube, and write acoustic songs, all with excellent planning and forethought (I have pages of documentation, a domain name, and personalized email address for the esports organization alone), but as soon as I took steps toward them, I became incredibly aware of my incompetence that had been proven through the past decade. It was a vicious cycle of beating myself up for not doing something, daydreaming of a way to escape my office prison, getting the details right, focusing on all of my weaknesses, running away before I could screw it up, and then beating myself up for not following through with something for once and it all started all over again. Repeat ad nauseam.

When I officially left my previous job, they told me I wasn't a good fit, and it was absolutely true. Of course I wasn't a good fit, because if I was honest with myself, I was too busy keeping my head up my butt and flipping everyone else off. It's pretty easy not to be a good fit when you don't even feel like you're any kind of a shape. Eff their shapes, I wanted be a blob, just blob anywhere and not have to conform to anything and be responsible for separating my current life from my ideal life. I wanted to blob around and wallow in my blobbiness and blame myself and everyone else simultaneously for my unsuccess. It doesn't matter what kind of potential I was born with or could create, it was all lost in the blob of anger, hurt, and frustration of what I had become.

So what happened next? Well, to quote the perennial comedy classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "I got better."

Kinda.

To this day, I'm still not sure where I stand. As a Christian, you're taught not to worry about tomorrow and to rejoice at your passing because you'll receive your eternal reward. The fact of the matter is, though, the unknown is still a scary thing. Not knowing when, where, and how that stop comes is daunting even with the promise of eternal life. That fear is what drives me now, desperately searching for that passion and reason for my stay on earth. I don't sleep much. Too much to do to sleep, and I don't even know what I'm doing, but I'm doing it because I'm too scared of doing nothing.

But I'm getting there. This blog post is weeks in the making, scraping away the procrastination and forcing myself to just take one damn step, Aaron, take one step toward doing something worthwhile with your talents. The words in this post are my steps toward realizing some of my potential that the Good Lord planted in me from the start, and if I truly believe his Word, if I am "being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion"*, there just might be some hope for this sad sack of sloshy organs. The creative being that has been trapped away in the walls built of years and years of excuses is finally starting to chip away at the floor when the guards aren't looking, and I'm hoping he escapes and sings me into action like Ronnie James Dio in The Pick of Destiny. In the meantime, I'm in a workplace that I feel driven to support those around me, and even though I don't want to be an IT guy for the rest of my life, this is a good stop on the journey and proper provision for my family.

One day, I hope that peace finds me. One day, I hope I can rest in the assurance provided by my faith. One day, I hope that I can enjoy the simple life of being a family man and not weigh my worth in what I do or don't accomplish.

That day isn't today, but I have hope that it's soon.

Hopefully, before I, yeh know, die.


*Philippians 1:6